This invention relates in general to a device to facilitate and encourage sufficiently quantitative examination of one""s own skin so as to provide useful information concerning the growth of skin abnormalities such as moles.
There are a number of known techniques for providing a grid which can be used to examine and estimate the growth of various skin abnormalities. These grids are generally incorporated in a clear plastic sheet that can be placed against the skin of the individual to provide comparative measurements of the growth of an abnormality over a period of time. These prior art devices are generally employed by heath care practitioners on patients although there is nothing inherent in them that would prevent the patient from using them on themselves. But the context is one that fails to provide the ease of convenient use that would encourage daily use. Daily use increases the assurance that an active growth would be fairly promptly identified. One such prior art devices is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,389,782 issued on Jan. 28, 1983.
Accordingly, the major purpose of this invention is to provide a self-examination grid situated in a media which will encourage if not assure daily use.
In brief, the preferred embodiment of this invention involves a bar of essentially transparent soap having a centrally placed opaque grid in a plane that is parallel to the two major surfaces of the bar of soap. The grid is preferably a square grid have orthogonal lines equally spaced apart in both directions.
By placing the lines of the embedded grid essentially in the center plane of the bar of soap, it will be visible and available to the user throughout almost the entire usable life of the soap bar.
The presence of the bar in the soap bar tends to assure daily access to the grid and tends to assure proximity of the grid to the user""s skin so as to facilitate and encourage daily use.